


you appear familiar, dear- you look just like my bathroom mirror

by takethebreadsticksandRUN



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Depersonalization, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/comfort kinda?, I WORKED SO HARD ON THIS PLEASE VALIDATE ME, I think?, Identity Issues, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Overuse of italics, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, grammar has been taken out back and shot, he has a homophobic grandmother, i don't care that i used six commas it just FLOWS BETTER THAT WAY, intermittent religious imagery, jon doesn't feel like he fits in his body, jon has so much anxiety poor bean, jon is trans no i don't make the rules, martin is his reason, oh i almost forgot, spanning pre season one to episode 162, that's it that's the fic, this has kind of a weird timeline just roll with me here, this is pretty angsty folks, trans!Jon, tw's in the notes, use of she/her pronouns for before he came out and transitioned, warning: blatant abuse of parantheses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26455414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethebreadsticksandRUN/pseuds/takethebreadsticksandRUN
Summary: There is a place, deep in the heart of fear, where you cling to the one you love and try not to remember who you are. You pull him closer, whisper reassurances in his ear, but every time you do you wince at the sound of your own voice. It’s too loud, isn’t it? It doesn’t fit your body; it grates at your throat as it claws its way out. Your words are too small for your feelings, but you do not know what to do. Slowly, so slowly, you fall silent. Days pass, soon, nothing passes as time loses its meaning. You do not say anything. He looks at you with his heart in his eyes and worries dusting his fingertips and doesn’t say anything either- you wonder, does he understand as well? Does he feel the same way you do?Your voice doesn’t fit your body- but then again, nothing does.ORJon Doesn't Feel Like He Belongs In His Body- the fic
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 25
Kudos: 101





	you appear familiar, dear- you look just like my bathroom mirror

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know what i'm doing with this fic other than the fact that i wrote this in snippets over the past few days and am Very Very Proud of it!!! it does deal with some pretty heavy dysphoria so if that is an Uncomfy subject for you be careful. i'm probably being over the top on the warnings but i want you to stay safe and happy!  
> trigger/content warnings:  
> dysphoria  
> depersonalization  
> minor anxiety attack  
> non-graphic worms  
> description of a burn  
> AND AS ALWAYS I THROW GRAMMAR OUT THE WINDOW BECAUSE YES I NEED THOSE COMMAS AND THE PARANTHESES ARE N E C C E S S A R Y  
> please please please let me know what you think! i put my heart and soul into it and comments/kudos feel great.  
> enjoy!  
> xxx

There is a place, deep in the heart of fear, where you cling to the one you love and try not to remember who you are. You pull him closer, whisper reassurances in his ear, but every time you do you wince at the sound of your own voice. It’s too loud, isn’t it? It doesn’t fit your body; it grates at your throat as it claws its way out. Your words are too small for your feelings, but you do not know what to do. Slowly, so slowly, you fall silent. Days pass, soon, nothing passes as time loses its meaning. You do not say anything. He looks at you with his heart in his eyes and worries dusting his fingertips and doesn’t say anything either- you wonder, does he understand as well? Does he feel the same way you do?

Your voice doesn’t fit your body- but then again, nothing does.

~~~

Early mornings before school. Weak sun, rising later than the girl and her grandmother. It doesn’t light up her room, doesn’t touch her head with warmth. It sleeps while she stands in front of the mirror, running her hands down skin that she is sure is _not her own._ Fabric itches, itches, itches. If she doesn’t rip it off now her body will burn from the weight of it, the wrongness of it.

No, the light is not her crown. Instead, she wears the scars of feelings that left her body in even gashes, the burden of pretending crushing her lungs.

_Pretty girl, sweet girl. When will you realize who you are? Good girl, nice girl, this is who you are. Stop trying, little girl. Brush your hair and pretend it feels better that way, loose and bouncing around your shoulders for the boys to pull and for your mirror to scream at._

_Pretty girl, sweet girl- this is who you are doomed to be._

~~~

There is freedom in destruction. He knows this. He has seen what the world has to offer by way of fire and water that both choke the air you try to breathe. The savage joy of drowning is nothing more than the release.

He smiles in the mirror for the first time, thinking over and over of how _light_ he feels. It’s ironic how standing alone in his room, the door locked and his lips still, can be so earth-shattering.

It’s nothing. _It’s everything._

His thoughts turn to the long hairs still clinging stubbornly to the sweatshirts he used to hide behind. They are all that’s left of the little girl. ( _her eyes were said to be starry, but the only constellations in her face were the silver tear tracks, tracing a story told to keep herself quiet_ )

He burns the photos, burns the memories, burns the person he used to be. Not quite a phoenix transformation, he is no avenging angel rising from the ashes.

Instead, he stares into the mirror, short hair and a baggy shirt, rolling his tongue silently around a familiar word that has taken him far too long to find.

_Jon. Jonathan Sims._

It’s bitter when his gran says it, sounding like she would rather call him a disgrace than by his name. But she does anyway, unhappy and uncomprehending, and it is enough.

It sounds sweeter in the silence, a whisper to himself when the world is too loud and his thoughts are even louder.

For the first time in his life, something fits his skin- his name. The name of a god to whom he has devoted his temple, morning rituals once bloody and bruising, now soft prayers of gratitude and pleas for patience.

He doesn’t believe in god.

But he believes in tomorrow ( _sanctifying his daily tasks, a thousand offerings in binders and jabbing needles_ ).

~~~

The suit is wrinkle-free and stark white against his body, the collar stiff as it digs into his throat. Jon’s hands are anxiety slick and shaking, papers trembling in traitorous fingers.

He breathes ( _in, out_ ) trying to focus on five things he can see ( _desk, air vent, cobwebs on the lamp, the tiny grains of color in the carpet, blinking light on his computer_ ) four things he can touch ( _splinters under the chair, condensation from his mug, ridges on his pants, worry-smooth ring_ ) three things he can hear ( _breathing breathing breathing_ ) two things he can smell ( _new clothes, old wood_ ) one thing he can taste ( _burnt tongue from too many cups of scalding coffee_ ).

Jon stands from the desk, still breathing ( _in, out_ ). That’s one victory. He is still breathing; he still here and he is still trying. He catches sight of himself in a window and freezes-

There is a man staring back at him. His face is unfamiliar but the way he holds himself isn’t. He walks as if Atlas draped him in a carpet of burning stars, looking as if he once had wings ( _as if he once could hold the sky in the palm of a hand_ ). The only feathers left are fingers that flutter- no freedom, no flight, only apprehension and nerves. The man is dressed professionally but it doesn’t look quite right- is it his slight frame? The way he tied his tie with unpracticed fingers? Does he look like he is pretending?

Is he pretending?

( _In, out_ )

He belongs here. He belongs in this body. He has fought for both, but if he’s honest with himself- and he rarely is- ( _the truth hurts, did you know that? did you know that it can stab and rip with the lightest touch? lies make it better, they always have_ )

-the only part of this man staring back at him that seems real is the look in his eyes. It’s righteous desperation and sinful fear, mixing in inky brown. It’s the same look a younger girl wore on picture day, her hair tortured her face pained as the smile she begged for didn’t come and she she she-

( _In, out_ )

Jonathan Sims works at the Magnus Institute. He is Head Archivist. He is qualified for this position and not at all terrified of the way life is baring its teeth at him.

~~~

It’s strange, the way the wriggling worms felt like they belonged there. They burrowed into his skin and Jon let them at first, glad that for once his body was useful.

Then Martin hands him a corkscrew and he remembers that this is his skin, his flesh, he needs to stay whole.

~~~

What do you do when the world shifts beneath your feet, revealing a new, terrible one below it? What happens when your beliefs are shaken to the very core and you lose all sense of where you fit into the world?

( _On clinical forms, Jon writes_ Catholic _in the appropriate space, feeling the guilty weight of lost rosaries and lead crosses. It isn’t a lie but it is a far cry from the truth, and he is tired, oh so tired, of having to explain every detail about himself. So he fits himself into a box and stays there. Nobody notices._ )

The answer is this- you pray. You pray to the god who let this happen, to the god who won’t hear you. You pray on the steps of your crumbling humanity, willing the cracks back together. You find a temple to make your home ( _alcohol or empty chapels or crowded streets or soft lips or silence or nonbelief or another barely-there lost soul or-_ ) and hope that the walls will accept your sacrifices.

If there is a god, if there is a supreme being who saw fit to let Jon stumble through their creation half-blind and alone, then they certainly won’t be found at his altar. No, he makes his promises in the darkness, he drinks to health and safety and the dream of being whole.

~~~

There are places where time doesn’t touch Jon, where his memories are blurred into one past and his dreams boxed into the future. A place where he simply exists and nothing is required of him.

The clock grates on his skin until he can see the imprints of ancient numbers burned into his wrists, reminding him that he is owned he is a slave to the gears that spat him out he does not belong-

Then the world goes silent and he is allowed to think without the ticking clock as a heartbeat ( _being_ _rejected by time itself is one of the softer disappointments in life_ ).

He finds a corner where the daylight can’t be seen and stays there, letting the quiet gray his hair and the darkness comfort his eyes. He pretends he can’t see the scars.

~~~

Martin is sitting across from him on the floor, breathing heavily. _Be careful_ , Jon wants to say, _this air is tainted and it will poison your clean lungs with acid and apologies._

He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t explain that the reason the oxygen isn’t safe is because he is there, breathing the same air and turning it dark.

Instead, he runs a shaking hand over his arms ( _no worms no worms no worms_ ) and hides his fear behind the mask of skepticism. ( _…unclassified parasites. They don’t have consciousness, they can’t plan, they’re just an unthinking infection._ )

Martin looks at him with eyes that are too kind to drown anyone in yet Jon would happily dive in and never resurface. ( _Why, Jon? Why do you hide?_ )

There are spiderwebs in his throat. There are worms in his skin. There is air in his lungs and maybe it shouldn’t be. _I don’t want you to see me,_ he thinks. The words mingle with the familiar flavor of his name ( _Jon Jon Jon_ ) and there is something in his chest that burns, caramelizing his heart like sugar candy.

There is no clock on the wall above Martin’s head.

_If you asked me to stop breathing, I would. If you asked me to leave, I would. If you asked me to give you my heart and soul and mind and body-_

_I already have. It’s not enough, it never will be enough, for my body is damaged and broken and still bleeding._

_Would you, though? Would you ask me to live?_

~~~

Bones, bones, bones- Jon winces as his crackle and pop, twisting and swirling in time to the laughter of the apparition in front of him. _Who are you who are you who are you-_

“I am delusion incarnate, Archivist, and I am here for _you_.”

_I’m not the Archivist. I’m not your prize. I am-_

His thoughts are echoing; it comes as no surprise that this thing can hear them.

“You don’t know who you are. Allow me to show you.”

The thing beckons and Jon has no choice but to follow. ( _Lie: he has a choice. He has a choice between staying in a place where his skin crawls with memories and fears and something else, something new, with the promise of an identity waiting for him._ )

There is no answer to the question Jon has been asking himself for years on the other side of the yellow door. There is nothing on the other side of the yellow door. Jon is falling, falling, falling through the nothing on the other side of the yellow door.

This is another place time can’t reach, but he takes no comfort in the knowledge that yes, he existed here forever, no, he has never been here before, and even though he can’t feel his beating heart he knows something is so very, very wrong.

He lands in a hallway that wrinkles under his knees and his bones twist into shapes that even he has never tried to be.

_The difference here lies in the distinction- he has tried, indeed he is trying, to be a man with all the answers. He has been a people-pleaser, a liar, a pretender, a fake, a mockery of a human being. This is not the same. He didn’t choose those, but he didn’t fight them, and now he fights this change with every fiber of his treacherous being and loses, over and over and over and over and over and over until he doesn’t know how much of his body is still his own_.

~~~

His body still twists, sometimes. Even his bones have decided they don’t belong.

~~~

His hands shake now. They didn’t before. Now they tremble ( _mothwings on fingertips, fragile bird bones holding up the sky_ ) and he is powerless to stop them. He squeezes them tighter, clenching them together as he prays through cement teeth.

~~~

Jude Perry melts and reforms in front of him while they speak, her face changing shape like molten wax, bones to liquid to ash dusted skin. He is almost jealous of her fluidity, almost ready to ask her how she does it, how she can be so comfortable with shifting features.

But then she sticks out her hand, and he takes it. A small price to pay for information, isn’t it? Just a handshake. Just a small burn on the back of his hand in exchange for something he desperately needed.

_When he was younger he would burn his marshmallows over the flames, watching as the soft white turned black and blazing hot, waiting for the right moment to peel off the outer layer of char. Jon waits for his hand to do the same thing, to disintegrate and reveal clean skin beneath. Is it wrong to want this? To want a fiery cocoon?_

_He doesn’t know, all he does is think think think- about the pain, about his friends, about the way it would feel for his body to crack and blacken in anticipation of something new, something to be worshipped._

~~~

His body is no longer his own. No, Jon has parceled it out, promised it to different gods. His skin belongs to the Circus ( _after they let him go he didn’t want it anyway, not the skin they had touched and touched and touched and touched and-_ ). His eyes don’t serve his brain ( _Elias watches the world through Jon, staring back at him from a pane of reflective glass_ ). His mind is crisscrossed with spiderwebs ( _they cut him when he thinks, tugging and slicing his thoughts_ ).

But his heart- oh, his treacherous, traitorous heart-

It’s not his own, either. Strangely, he doesn’t mind. It always squirmed inside his chest, the fear of being known/knowing another enough to love them overpowering his longing.

Now every breath he takes is for the man who brings him tea sometimes and smiles always even when his eyes are red and his fingertips are redder ( _there is blood underneath his fingernails there has to be there has to be_ ). Every time Jon forces himself to stay alive one more day, it is because there is someone out there who matters enough to fight for. He doesn’t say anything, just takes the cup with half of a grin ( _teeth blocking words tongue too swollen to speak_ ). 

Every nightmare brings a new death and every day a new threat, but he is still alive to see it in a body that is pulled by puppet strings with words that shrink in the darkness.

~~~

“Come back safe, Jon, you hear me?”

_I hear you I hear you I hear you I hear you_ -

“Promise me you will come back.”

His voice doesn’t shake as he replies, looking everywhere but at Martin’s eyes ( _that anxiety is his fault_ ). “I promise.”

_I promise with all the stars in the sky, all the freckles on your skin, every time I should have told you_ ( _I love you I love you I love you_ ) _that I will come back. My dying breath is the only offering I can give you, please don’t laugh at the feebleness of it._

 _I will come back_.

~~~

Heartbeat-

None. The flat line on the monitor scrolls endlessly, taunting and so loud ( _he lied, he said he would come back_ ).

The nurses don't see it but Jon’s body wakes three times, fragile breaths stolen for half a second before falling back into the world of the dead ( _there is no heaven, no hell, just endless dreams and if you’re lucky, silence_ ).

One-

The first time was a mistake. Whatever held Jon captive slipped for a moment, allowing heavy limbs oxygen and blood. Dry eyes and dry lips, he Saw the world and he made a decision:

No god could hold him there, fear ruled his life with an iron thumb. Wasn’t it time to let it all go?

Two-

The second time, well, nobody remembers what happened. Memory is frail, prone to change and suggestion. Martin saw what his mind wanted to.

Three-

_Blue sky blue skin blue plastic chair blue blue blue_

Something was missing. Jon’s pulse returned long enough for him to register loss and pain and the color blue.

~~~

Empty hands and empty words ( _broken promises, both of them_ ). His temple is full of wilting sacrifices, the blessed walls defaced by knives and unwelcome eyes. Jon returns to find the world in the same shape as it was before.

He still doesn't fit into it quite right.

~~~

_Come with me, Martin. Stay safe with me, I won’t let them hurt you anymore. Just this one thing, then we can have it all-_

“It’s pretty drastic…”

He can't disguise the hope in his voice, the longing for a chance to try again, to start over. ( _I am Jonathan Sims. I am not the Archivist. I am, among other things, in love with you, Martin Blackwood._ )

_Of course he wouldn’t want to. Why would he? You left him alone, you promised him resurrection and gave him your crucified body, no clay can heal these blinded eyes and you are trapped in his presence as well as the gaze of the Eye._

~~~

There is nowhere left for Jon to turn, no more hiding places or secrets to protect him. Frail body, frail heart- neither belong to him.

A sanctuary, a quiet mind, safety in distance. All things he would have sold his soul for long ago, but now his skin tingles with the weight of absence ( _gone gone gone_ )

~~~

Home is where the heart is, they say. Jon knows that isn’t true, either he has never had a home because he is heartless, or he has never had a home because he has a heart.

Now he knows, home is wherever Martin is. Home is the front porch of a small cabin in Scotland. Home is the pasta aisle in the local shop. Home is the small kitchen in the early mornings ( _home is the word carved into the altar at Martin’s feet._ )

_Home_ , he decides, _is where the safety is_.

~~~

There is a place, deep in the heart of fear, where you trap yourself and call it safety. It was once a cabin and professes still to be such, but as with all in this new world that promises respite, it is a trap.

It wasn’t important to you, it never was. No, what made this place holy was the man who walked the hollow halls, his fingers wound tightly around your wrists, your heart in the permanent process of being undone. It burned in your chest and for once when you realized that you didn’t fit, that you didn’t curl around the mold in the same way everybody else did, that your love was different, you didn’t protest.

Let’s make a list of things that don’t fit, shall we?

Your body was never yours, to begin with. You stole it from a little girl with a broken heart and mistaken limbs.

Your skin has been torn and stretched and burned into something that is entirely new and not wholly your own.

Your eyes, your bones, your flesh and blood, the words that betrayed your lips ( _don’t speak don’t speak don’t speak_ ), the very heart that still demands to beat-

None of it is yours.

You take care of it for him, because you love him in so many ways it hurts.

**Author's Note:**

> tell me your favorite part/leave a comment or review and i'll give you my firstborn son (hahaha jk jk...unless?)


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